Environmental Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
Even when power plant emissions are regulated by the Clean Water
Act, plants that violate the law are not penalized. Since 2004, 90 percent
of 313 coal-fi red power plants that have violated the Clean Water Act
were not fi ned or otherwise sanctioned by federal or state regulators.
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Plants that were fi ned paid only trivial amounts.
Coal Ash
Coal plants generate 96 million tons a year of toxic fl y ash, bottom ash,
and scrubber sludge, combustion waste containing arsenic, mercury, and
many other poisonous elements. Coal ash piles are so toxic and unstable
that until June 2009, the Department of Homeland Security refused to
divulge the location of the nation's forty-four high-hazard-potential coal
sites. A high-hazard potential rating is related not to the stability of these
impoundments but to the potential for harm should the impoundment
fail. The department and the EPA feared that terrorists would fi nd ways
to spill the toxic substances.
The waste is pumped into active and abandoned mines for decades,
into about 400 landfi lls, and 1,300 holding ponds at 156 coal-fi red
power plants in thirty-four states; only 26 percent of the ponds have
liners at their base, so the waste can leak into streams, aquifers and
drinking water. At least 137 sites in thirty-four states have poisoned
surface or groundwater supplies from improper disposal of combustion
waste (coal ash).
Spills from these ponds have killed or injured hundreds of people,
most recently in Tennessee in December 2008 where 5.4 million cubic
yards of coal ash accumulated since 1958 spilled from its earthen reten-
tion pond near Knoxville, destroying or damaging twenty-six houses and
releasing more hazardous material than the
Exxon-Valdez
oil spill did.
Three hundred acres of land were buried, roads and railroad tracks were
covered, and sludge fl ooded into the nearby Emory River, attaining a
depth of 30 feet in some places.
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Residents have complained of health
problems from the spill. The EPA called the spill one of the largest and
most serious environmental releases in the nation's history. In the fi rst
four months of the cleanup by the Tennessee Valley Authority, very little
of the ash was removed. The cost of the cleanup is approaching $1
billion, not counting lawsuits and penalties. The total cost will not be
known for some time.
Long-term effects of coal ash, such as cancer from arsenic consumption
or liver damage from exposure to cadmium, cobalt, lead, and other pol-
